Institutional Forces and L2 Writing Feedback in Higher Education

Abstract

There has recently been growing interest in the relationship between second language (L2) writing development and the institutional contexts in which this process is embedded. The present study examines this relationship by reporting on an eight-month qualitative investigation of international university students and their perspectives on the impact of feedback practices for L2 writing development in content courses. Drawing on interviews with five focal students and four focal instructors, as well as on writing samples and course documents, this study illustrates the powerful but often unspoken impact that institutional factors such as departmental budgets and prescribed grade distributions have on L2 writers and their instructors. These factors are shown to constrain students’ and instructors’ abilities to discuss how discipline-specific writing is structured and how it might be negotiated and ultimately understood. Implications focus on the challenges of helping L2 students develop academic writing skills without also addressing the institutional factors that underlie writing and feedback practices.

Social Dimensions and Processes in Second Language Acquisition: Multilingual Socialization in Transnational Contexts

“…Who do they interact with, and how often, for how much time, and to what linguistic/cultural effect? What kinds of language input and feedback are provided, if any, by these interlocutors (Séror, ; Storch, ; Surtees, ) as part of their language socialization and how do these interventions affect their subsequent performance or attitudes? How is their attention drawn to salient linguistic features?…”

Academic English Socialization Through Individual Networks of Practice

“…In recent years, L2 socialization has been extended to research on academic discourse socialization (see reviews in Duff, , ; Duff & Anderson, in press). Some of the studies have focused on oral discourse practices and speech events in high school and university classrooms (Duff, , , ; Kobayashi, ; Morita, , ; Zappa‐Hollman, ) and others primarily on written discourse (Bronson, ; Seloni, ; Séror, ). These studies view academic discourse as “not just an entity but a social, cognitive, and rhetorical process and an accomplishment, a form of enculturation, social practice, positioning, representation, and stance‐taking” (Duff, , p. 170).…”

Teacher written feedback on adult beginners’ writing in a second language

“…Lärarfokus på innehållsliga aspekter har påvisats i studier såsom Conrad & Goldstein (1999), Hyland & Hyland (2010) samt Leki (2006). Att lärare fokuserar på språket har framkommit i andra studier såsom Diab (2005), Montgomery & Baker (2007) samt Séror (2009). Vid sidan av vad lärare fokuserar på (innehåll eller språk) har forskare inom L2-skrivande uppmärksammat talhandlingar.…”

“…(2011) har påpekat att lärare inte alltid tar hänsyn till studerandes individuella behov. De ger inte heller konstruktiva och explicita förslag på förbättringar (Séror 2009). Flera forskare har poängterat att det finns ett antal faktorer som har lett till en variation i studiernas resultat avseende lärares responspraktik, bl.a.…”

“…Några studier (Lee 2008(Lee , 2011Séror 2009) har rapporterat att examinationstraditioner och skolans policy påverkade lärares responspraktik negativt, bl.a. på grund av bristande stöd från skolledningen genom att möjligheter för kompetensutveckling saknades.…”